Turn
Your Real-Life Speaking Engagements into Credit Toward Your Toastmaster Award
If you are working to complete your Competent Speaker award
quickly, it can become frustrating to be limited to speaking once every 8 weeks.
It is a little known fact that you can get credit for speaking outside of our
club if you follow a few simple rules. First, the speech you give must
correlate with one of the projects in your manual. Non-manual speeches will never
count towards a Toastmaster award, no matter where they are given. It would be
a good idea to consult with the VPE before to make sure your speech will count
toward your award. Second, you must have another Toastmaster present as
an evaluator when you give your speech. The kind-hearted person who agrees to
do this for you must fill out the evaluation section in your manual and then review
it with you verbally in order for your speech to receive credit. Third,
you must bring your manual to the next meeting to get the VPE's signature in the
back under your Record of Assignments page. Show her the completed evaluation
form in the project section to verify that you received the evaluation that Toastmasters
International requires to qualify your speech for credit towards your award. There
are also ways to earn credits speaking inside Toastmasters. It is sometimes possible
to get scheduled as a speaker at a club other than Gilbert Toastmasters. Ask some
experienced members for tips on clubs that are open to this or that frequently
have open speaker slots. You can also earn credit for a manual project
by speaking in club competitions. You will have to recruit your own evaluator
if you do this. Make sure that your speech correlates with a manual project and
that you provide your evaluator with your manual, just as you would for a regularly
scheduled speech. |